Ever since my first nasty incident, I'd had these "incidents" every 6 months or so - more or less. (although the last two came within 2 months of one another for some mysterious reason).

The whole thing is mysterious and frustrating. Having this happen is really no worse than a common cold - however the frustration comes from having no idea what it is, what has caused it, nor what will make it go away. Mouthwash generally helps. If it last awhile, I take antibiotics. However I don't know if it would have gone away in its same amount of time if I'd skipped either the mouthwash or the antibiotics.

After my last occurrence, I saw my GP and asked for help. She shrugged her shoulders, and she sent me to an ENT. Last week, after much rescheduling,i I saw somebody. They looked me over thoroughly, shrugged, described a couple of theories, and prescribed an MRI. My MRI was saturday, and completely uneventful. The only downside was having to remove my hair feathers, which I'd just had reattached.

This morning was my post-MRI followup. It was also uneventful, and a bit discouraging. The good news is: the MRI found nothing to be concerned about, my head looks perfectly normal. Now I do acknowledge that this is good news, because the majority of things found by an MRI turn out to be Bad Things. However the bad news is, they then just shrugged their shoulders and passed me off to some other doctor.

When I visited last week, the young resident who saw me vowed that we'd keep running tests and exploring options until we figured out what was causing these strange incidents! This morning, two other doctors lined up against the table and shrugged their shoulders. They assigned me some blood work, because they thought it might be an auto-immune sorta thing.

They then suggested i followup with my primary care physician. That's when I realized it: they were dumping me. Far from the "exploring every option" vow the other guy had made to me, these guys were taking the "it's not my area" tact instead. The stuff they could fix didn't seem to need fixing, so they sent me to have some blood drawn and then on my merry way.

I was bummed! I mean, I know I should be glad that the MRI did not reveal anything nasty lurking in my ENT area. However I was hoping it would find something mild, like a nice salivary stone to remove. Or at least a pointer to a next step. Instead it led to a "not my job" sorta reaction, and they're sending me back to my PCP who had sent me there in the first place.

Grrrr....we'll see what the blood results say, and then see what she has to say in two weeks or so. But right now I feel like I wasted a whole lot of time and energy for nothing! *sigh*

No to both questions - it is possibly an infected parotid gland, or if not it behaves similarly. Could be from a salivary stone, but multiple doctor visits have never found a stone or other explanation.